HUD FY 2011 Budget Passes House: Amendment Will Get HUD Attention--All HUD Travel Funds Cut.

The HUD/DOT FY 2011 Appropriations bill passed the House yesterday, with amendments.  The bill status page HERE has links to Congressional actions, including amendments. 

One Democratic amendment from Kaptur of Ohio, TOTALLY eliminates all HUD travel funds. When I say "totally", I mean totally.

I have posted the Congressional Record discussion of that amendment HERE. The gist:

Rather than let HUD staff use our public dollars to travel to places 
like Rio de Janeiro, when people in our country are working so hard to 
try to work out these mortgages and the banks aren't answering the 
telephones, let HUD use all of its power and authority to bring the 
worst offenders and their buddies to focus their staff on doing 
mortgage workouts in places like Toledo, Ohio, Cleveland, Boise, Idaho, 
Las Vegas, Sacramento. We ought to be doing mortgage workouts, not 
taking what look like vacations to Rio de Janeiro.

I believe I projected in prior post that the Secretary's trip to Rio was going to be a PR problem, but I did not think it was going to take so long, or that a Democratic congresswoman would use it as part of the appropriations process to "send a message" to a Democratic Administration that has significantly increased funding for HUD programs. 

Originally posted and created on the Oregon Housing Blog.